


my, what a meet cute

by kwritten



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Detective Noir, F/F, Femslash, Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26012752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: prompt:: tvd/btvs, dawn/elena, private detective/femme fatale noir AUSo you're a private detective? I didn't know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you're a mess, aren't you?
Relationships: Elena Gilbert/Dawn Summers
Comments: 2





	my, what a meet cute

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionheartedgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedgirl/gifts), [happyg_rl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyg_rl/gifts).



She walked into the office through a cloud of smoke, like a witch in an old movie. Elena Gilbert had stopped believing in good witches somewhere between the fourth and sixth world war. Some of the old ones - like her - claimed that there were still public primary schools out there, probably high in the Appalachia, that still maintained a proper accounting of WW4. She hoped not. They'd all (Gilberts, Salvatores, Forbes, Bennets) been far too public.

She walked into the office through a cloud of smoke, as if she had apparated at that precise moment intentionally - or at least, that's what the little man sweating profusedly about his cheating wife in the too-large chair across from her desk seemed to think, his purple-red face going stark white as the door opened, a cloud of smoke billowed in, and a woman walked through.

The man - Mr. Bingley? (no, that would be too easy) Mr. Whyte - gaped as if he'd never seen a woman before, and Elena narrowed her eyes at her secretary.

"Jeremy, what have I told you--"

"About dramatic entrances?" the man piped up in a voice a bit too wobbly, hair graying at the temples, khaki slacks frayed and puddling around his ankles, smiled over her and gods help them all, he winked.

Impertinent.

"...Smoking," Elena finished with one eyebrow in her hairline.

Lesser beings have been known to tremble at that eyebrow - dark, arched, and sardonic.

Younger brothers? Smirk.

And also helpfully shuffle the Mr. Whyte's out of the office and back into their mundane lives without so much as a beleaguered huff or outraged sigh, or even a grumble as they paid the 'consultation' fee.

"I believe this younger brother could use a raise," Jeremy said under his breath, in a tone only she could pick out, as he closed the door nearly silently behind him.

When Elena thought to clear the exasperated expression from her face, the woman Jeremy had interrupted her meeting with Mr. Whyte in order to plop unceremoniously in her lap without so much as an introduction or comment as to the lady's relationship, was trying to wriggle a smirk off her own, very red, lips. Not that Elena could see much of the girl's face aside from those teasing lips, hidden as it was behind a garishly black hat shrouded in an ornate lace that spoke of a style older than even the two Gilberts who had the occasion to be alive to see it in their office that sunlit afternoon. Her long, thin body was clad in an equally ostentatious black pantsuit, with delicate gold paisley detail that a casual viewer would have thought was a hologram, but Elena would bet her left pinky was actual stitching in the fabric. Red heels, that matched perfectly the shade on her wide lips, and a tennis bracelet that sparkled dangerously from her left wrist.

"Apologies, ma'am," Elena interlaced her fingers and stretched them out on the desk in front of her. "I presume my secretary rushed you into a paying client's place because you know what you're about, therefore let's cut through the bullshit, shall we?"

The long, outrageously clad woman leaned forward, as if to share a secret, a wide smile showing off wide, unfashionable teeth.

Elena wondered ildly if the secret was the same as her own, that she'd genuinely prefer this strange girl - woman - would continue that lean, until she climbed across Elena's desk to straddle her face - rather than tell her some sob story of a younger sister run off with the wrong sort of boy, or a cheating spouse.

The thought of a spouse enjoying all of those very long limbs and pert mouth, her gaze flashed from the woman... girl's hands to her face. The hands were encased in dainty lace gloves of the darkest black. The face was still also shrouded in that lace... roses had never seemed so forbidding.

When was the last time she'd seen a wild rose?

Surely not in this city.

Surely this pregnant pause had gone on too long and Elena had obviously missed the poor girl talking.

Elena cleared her throat, "Yes, well--"

Just as the woman in the black suit began in an abrupt sort of way that made Elena wonder if she hadn't swallowed her words before speaking them this time, because the timing was nothing short of impossible. "Yes, well. What your... secretary," she paused and inclined her head towards the distorted green-glass window in the door she'd only just been ushered through, "had actually said something to the general effect that well..." She shook her head and Elena marveled at the way the lace flowed in the breeze the motion created. She hadn't seen lace of that quality since.... "The fool my presence vacated was clearly trying to turn the tables on his wife before she requests a divorce from the Court, I do hope you testify against the weasel."

Elena suddenly felt very thirsty.

"One of your set, I suppose - member of your club and all that," Elena waved her hand in the air between them, as if her bare hand could solve everything that existed in the space between them. Surely her hand, if given the chance, could make that space disappear.

The woman's smile tilted slightly to the right now, a dimple appearing just below the cheshire curve, as if an arrow sign pointing to the most kissable landing on the smooth cheek. "He owes my family quite a bit of money, Dick Gilbert."

Elena was instantly, very thirsty.

The woman laughed, high and girlish, not at all husky as Elena had anticipated. The muscles in her stomach clenched, just like those milqtoast heroes in Caroline's dime-store novels always seemed to be doing. "I'm so sorry... I've always wanted to call a PI a Dick. It seems almost as though one could time-travel like Superman in Somewhere in Time, with only the use of gangster vernacular." She beamed at Elena, really beamed. In a way that reminded Elena of moonlight falling through the cracks of the gazebo in old Mystic Falls. "Excuse my nonsense, my ... grandfather raised me in the old Clarisse-style of the early century. They can put the mind of an old-timer in the body of an immortal cyborg, but they can't really pull that mind into the present along with it, can they?"

Such a bold lie coming from such bold lips was almost as outrageous as the suit she was wearing.

Elena felt a feral smile begin careening across her face in the same moment that she smelled Jeremy's damn incense again - would the boy ever give up the practice, and immediately after heard the dulcet tones of a young woman measured against her brother's voice and her smile grew genuine once again. She wasn't alone. (Anymore.) (Again.) (Again.) (Still...)

"I believe you've tossed your chance, Mrs. ...?"

"Oh good goddess no, Mrs. Summers was my mother and Miss Summers is my sister, I really only answer to Dawn if you must call me anything at all."

The smile on Elena's face did not move, though her blood was suddenly charging so quickly through her long-dead body that she was sure she'd explode.

Immortality, after all, wasn't so unique these days.

"I don't need the services of Miss Gilbert, city-wide respected PI, as it happens. What I'm here for... is the Doppleganger."


End file.
